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Results: 1 - 15 of 104
Pamela Fralick
View Pamela Fralick Profile
Pamela Fralick
2020-07-06 11:25
Thank you, Dr. Neame.
I would like to shift to a topic that I know is on the minds of many, and that's the potential for drug shortages as a result of COVID-19.
IMC's membership consists of the pharmaceutical companies that discover, develop and deliver innovative new medicines, that is, brand-name prescription medicines. Our members continue to be vigilant in identifying potential supply issues and are committed to working closely with Canadian governments to quickly identify solutions. We support the efforts of Health Canada in this regard. In the event of any anticipated delays in supplying the Canadian market with an approved medicine to meet expected patient demand, our member companies would, in full compliance with the law, report this to Health Canada, and it would be made public on the drugshortages.ca website.
If there is one area where the federal government could provide additional support, it is in the area of COVID-related hospital products. Specifically, there may be an enhanced role for the federal government to play in coordinating provincial requests for additional supplies of drugs to ensure that no province and no Canadian goes without the medications they need.
Speaking more broadly, we recognize that reliable access to medications depends on many factors. These include regulatory simplicity, timely approvals for new medications and the continued smooth functioning of global supply chains. In this regard, we support Health Canada's ongoing commitment to take steps toward a simpler regulatory regime. However, more needs to be done to quicken the approval of new medications. We applaud the efforts made by the federal and some provincial governments to protect medical supply chains serving Canada.
On the topic of regulations, we remain deeply concerned about the impact that amendments to the patented medicines regulations will have on Canadians' access to new medications. Industry's concerns have not been adequately addressed by the recently revised guidelines. Our concerns are supported by independent studies and by the delayed product launches as a result of the regulations. The regulations will also hurt Canada's ability to realize the Department of Innovation and Science's HBEST strategy and attract investment to our life sciences sector at a time when provinces such as Ontario and Quebec want to build capacity in this area.
Let me assure you that IMC members are sensitive to the increasing strain on health budgets. However, since the recent federal court decision removed a key pillar of the PMPRB's approach to price regulation, a fundamental rethinking of PMPRB's approach is now required. We remain keen to work with the federal government on alternative solutions to the proposed changes to the patented medicines regulations that would ensure that Canadians continue to have access to affordable, innovative medicines. It is not too late to find another solution to reach this objective.
To return to the industry's response to COVID-19, I'd like to leave you with three examples of my members' contributions.
First, some of our member companies are ensuring patients' continued access to the treatments they need by providing their medicines free of charge if patients cannot afford them or if they lose private prescription drug coverage due to COVID-related unemployment. On this point, I am able to report that based on feedback received from some of our members, there has in fact been minimal demand for free medication from patients. One of our members, for instance, reported that they have seen less than 2% of anticipated demand for free medicine. Others are reporting similar experiences. This suggests to us that there are far fewer people without access to the medicines they need than expected.
Second, with some provincial health care systems experiencing critical skills shortages, Innovative Medicines Canada member companies are stepping up to help patients and communities. Many of our members are providing paid leave to health professional employees, enabling them to volunteer in health care facilities, where the need is greatest.
Finally, IMC members have created a special COVID-19 fund. A key initiative created through this fund is the creation of a research chair in pandemic preparedness. This is industry's way of helping Canada prepare for the next health crisis.
Thank you again for the opportunity to talk with you about how Canada's innovative medicines and life sciences sector is responding to COVID-19. Like your other witnesses, we would be pleased to answer your questions.
View Luc Desilets Profile
BQ (QC)
Ms. Fralick, apart from the criteria of effectiveness, safety and, I imagine, price, what could influence a government's decision?
Pamela Fralick
View Pamela Fralick Profile
Pamela Fralick
2020-07-06 11:50
I think my colleagues, Drs. Halperin and Neame, might be the best to respond to that.
As I say, there's quite a bit of coverage in the press right now in terms of making that decision. Do you provide it to the most vulnerable, the elderly, the marginalized populations, or do we identify the biggest spreaders, young people, etc., who are perhaps asymptomatic but spreading the disease? Do we give it to front-line health professionals? These are big questions for policy decision-makers.
Drs. Halperin or Neame, you may wish to jump in on this one.
Dion Neame
View Dion Neame Profile
Dion Neame
2020-07-06 11:51
The epidemiology has been fairly clear on this in regard to who are the most vulnerable. Certainly, they are people who are the most frail in our community, and it's quite horrible when you look at Canada and the statistics for Canada. Initially, when you were looking at the mortality rates, particularly, almost 85% of people were from long-term care and seniors homes.
Because they're the most vulnerable, they tended to unfortunately pass quite quickly. You'll see that the numbers now have gone down to about 65%. However, when you look at the reason they have dropped from 85% to 65%, it's that people may be living outside of a long-term care or seniors retirement home. They are also the people who may have multiple comorbidities and tend to be above 65 years of age.
The epidemiology for me is fairly clear. Dr. Halperin, would you like to comment?
Scott Halperin
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Scott Halperin
2020-07-06 11:52
The other thing will be that there's a process that is taking place by the national advisory committee on immunization, which will be recommending how the vaccines, when they are available, should be used, how they should be rolled out and who should have priority. Those recommendations will be federal recommendations made to the provinces, and then each province will interpret those based on their own population. The vaccine will be rolled out based on that prioritization.
That's very similar to what was done with the H1N1 pandemic. A process will take place. It will take into account bioethics, the epidemiology, the effectiveness of the vaccine on different populations, etc.
Paramvir Nagpal
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Paramvir Nagpal
2020-07-06 13:07
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
I’d like to start off by giving you some background about our company, Mapsted. We have been in business since 2014. We’re an award-winning Canadian technology firm that provides highly scalable and accurate location-based solutions inside and outside any building without the use of additional external hardware such as Bluetooth beacons or Wi-Fi connectivity. Instead, our technology uses innovative, adaptive, data-fusion and self-learning algorithms to deliver an accurate and scalable positioning using any off-the-shelf smart phone. This means our technology can work anywhere, including in areas that are usually thought of as “dead zones”, like underground locations or skyscrapers.
We further expanded our core technology and developed an extensive location-based service platform, which includes seamless outdoor-indoor wayfinding, asset tracking, targeted alerts and notifications, analytics, location intelligence and secure contact tracing. We work with a wide variety of businesses and industries, including retail, health care and higher education. Our technology has been recognized as one of the most advanced location-based technologies in the world, with 62 patents granted to date. We have deployed our technology across 255 million square feet worldwide.
Over the last few months, we have seen an unprecedented response from the technology sector to the global spread of COVID-19 in our communities. Most countries have focused on developing technologies to help with contact tracing to try to flatten the curve and also prevent the health care system from becoming overwhelmed.
Singapore was an early adopter of a community-driven contact-tracing app, and now European member states are adopting a decentralized Bluetooth model for contact tracing. In this model, no data is stored centrally, ensuring that it's not possible to reconstruct an individual’s relationships or identity. They are planning an international “roaming” feature that could help revive travel and tourism across the area. Each country would have its own app, but the apps could “talk” to each other and help make travel across the region safer.
Other countries like China went beyond contact tracing and developed additional uses for location technology to help people access products and services during this challenging time by helping them check store levels for masks, sanitizer and gloves at nearby stores and also moving a significant portion of their everyday health care to online consultations.
In addition, they adopted the use of health QR codes to ensure that workplaces that had to remain open were safer. If an employee received a green QR code, they were able to work. A yellow or red code would require self-isolation. Population density maps have also been used to help pinpoint vulnerable populations, large gatherings and, along with some real-time data related to health and travel, to provide citizens with a visual representation of where potential hot spots are likely to occur, helping them to reduce their risk by avoiding those areas.
As we have seen recently, there have been some challenges and concerns with this type of technology, one of the main ones being privacy. Canada is looking to adopt a decentralized model of contact tracing moving forward, which will help address many of the privacy fears that currently exist, but right now, this concern has led to poor adoption rates of the apps, making them less effective. Alberta’s app, for example, has been downloaded by just 200,000 people out of a population of approximately 4.4 million. We need to have approximately 60% of the population using this type of app for it to be effective.
As the country moves to reopen in stages, we need a way to ensure that we can keep our population safe while allowing for Canada’s economic growth to move forward again. Essentially, we need to find a way to safely function in a society with the virus, as we wait for a vaccine to be developed. Location-based technology will play an important role in this process.
First, integrating the digital contact-tracing technology with traditional contact tracers can prove to be more effective in stamping out the virus hot spots and tracking the spread of the disease. Integrating these two approaches ensures that we address the issues inherent to each method. For example, traditional contact tracing has limitations of scalability, notification delays, and contact identification in public spaces. And even if we don’t have full adoption of the digital contact-tracing technology, many of the gaps could be filled by traditional methods, ensuring greater effectiveness overall.
As we get back to using many non-essential services, additional location-based technology can keep us safer. It’s not enough just to ensure that our health care system doesn’t get overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases. We need to work to accommodate patients who need diagnostics and care for other conditions and help them safely and securely access the services they need. Patients must have access to timely cancer screenings, and people with compromised immune systems need a way to safely plan their hospital or clinic visit for treatment so they don’t unnecessarily expose themselves to the virus by coming into prolonged contact with members of the public.
Seamless outdoor-indoor navigation technology, combined with location-based notifications and analytics, can help these patients plan optimized routes, from finding the closest hospital entrance to their appointments to planning the shortest route through the building to multiple appointments in different sections of the hospital. It can further help by sending notifications telling them when it’s safe to enter a waiting area, and giving them instructions detailing any safety precautions that must be followed. Heat maps could also be used to prevent bottlenecks and show the busy areas, so vulnerable patients could avoid walking into a situation that would increase the risk to their health.
This approach would also allow appointments to be spaced out, allow ample time for cleaning before and after patient visits, and help ease the anxiety of such visits significantly, helping to ensure that fewer people put off potentially life-saving tests and treatments because of the fear of getting infected.
Ontario’s upcoming cloud-based case management system, which will connect the lab system with the public health system, is another example of where location-based technology could complement a service to make going to appointments for tests and diagnostics safer. This technology would send patients to labs close to where they live, and use targeted notifications to let patients know when the doctors and technicians are ready for them, so they don’t need to wait with others in a room, potentially increasing their risk of exposure. To address any privacy concerns, all data should be stored locally on each device for a limited period of time, and would be anonymized.
Using location technology in this way would allow people to continue to practise effective social and physical distancing, while allowing them to access the needed services. This type of approach would also work well in malls and big box retail stores. This type of navigation technology would not only give customers the shortest or the most optimized route to the department they need, but it would also lead them directly to the product they are looking for, eliminating the need to wander around the store aisles in frustration trying to locate it. This would help reduce the time people spend inside around groups of other shoppers, reducing their exposure risk.
Many stores, including grocery chains, face problems with lineups as fewer shoppers are being admitted into the store at once. These lines put people in contact with others for longer periods of time as they wait outside. This is especially true ahead of holidays and long weekends. This is where the location-based solutions really shine, by ensuring that essential services like grocery stores can create a safe shopping environment for their customers, enforcing physical distancing measures and reducing the possibility of the spread of the virus. Stores can use this technology to set up a geofence around their location and control foot traffic into the store without any lineups, preventing crowding and bottlenecks.
This technology will continue to play a critical role as we move past the initial measures to help slow the spread of the virus and start to ease restrictions and open more businesses in the transition back to a new normal.
The uses of this technology go far beyond health care or retail applications. Contact-tracing apps can be a trade-off between privacy and effectiveness, but if we integrate this technology with traditional methods, and supplement it with additional location-based products and solutions such as indoor navigation, targeted notifications, geofencing and tagging, they could help more Canadians safely return to work, attend medical appointments, events or extracurricular activities, and much more, as we wait for a vaccine or an effective treatment for COVID-19 to be developed.
Thank you.
Patrick Hupé
View Patrick Hupé Profile
Patrick Hupé
2020-07-06 13:18
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks also to the members, the witnesses and the guests.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share with you our comments on the Government of Canada's reaction to the pandemic.
I would first like to congratulate the government for taking the following measures to date. It actively recognized the importance of maintaining international relations and the integrated global supply chain in order to make sure that infected patients have rapid access to medical technologies. That was critical. Canada played a key role in that regard, especially within the G20. It also established an action plan to mobilize industry in order to meet the challenges of the pandemic. It centralized the procurement of essential supplies and, lastly, created financial support for people who had lost their jobs in order to lighten the burden of the pandemic.
If I may, I would now like to give you a modest introduction to Medtronic Canada.
In fact, we are the largest medical technology and medical solutions company in the world. We have 90,000 employees globally, including 1,000 employees in Canada. We have a presence from coast to coast and our activities include marketing, research and development, production, education and training. The company focuses on five key areas: cardiac and vascular diseases, diabetes, minimally invasive therapies, neuroscience, and consulting services, which help healthcare systems to reduce wait times and improve the patient and caregiver experience.
Like many companies in the medical devices sector, we were significantly affected by the pandemic. First, there was an increased demand for our ventilators, pulse oxymeters, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines, and other devices used in respiratory care. That had two key consequences. First, we went into humanitarian mode, in the sense of delivering our devices that were in high demand to where the need was greatest. We were no longer in a conventional business mode, where we receive orders and process them on a first-come-first-served basis. In addition, we provided free access to our intellectual property in the case of a portable ventilator, so that other specialist partners, including Ventilators for Canadians, could manufacture more ventilators locally.
Lastly, our maintenance technicians and our clinical trainers had to work tirelessly to coordinate installation and maintenance and to train caregivers, particularly with regard to those ventilators. The cancellation of air routes made the task particularly difficult. Despite the crisis, our clinical teams continued to support essential surgeries all over the country.
Second, given that we provide technologies and services for more than 70 diseases, the cancellation and postponement of non-essential surgeries forced us to suspend our activities for a number of months. Despite the financial repercussions that ensued, we laid no one off because of the pandemic. Instead, we made preparations to support the resumption of surgeries by putting our experts and our products at the disposal of health care systems. We provided our expertise in clinical care pathways, in analysis, and in reducing wait times in order to redefine patient triage protocols, to optimize processes, and to shorten the time before discharge following a procedure.
Now we are at the point of considering the resumption of surgical procedures, we sincerely believe that Medtronic Canada and some members of the industry, given the international experience and the ingenuity of Canadian SMEs in our field, can be part of the solution rather than being simply restricted to the role of suppliers operating only in a purely transactional business relationship.
I would like therefore to focus my comments today on three areas. They are where we can provide tangible, proven and time-tested solutions so that procedures can be quickly resumed and the health and welfare of our fellow Canadians can be assured. These are the quickest possible transition from hospital to home, the procurement system, and the improvement of clinical care pathways. The pandemic has certainly highlighted the importance of keeping patients out of hospital once they have received appropriate care. Digital health care can certainly play a major role in that regard.
First, in a hospital setting, it allows physical distancing measures to be observed, thereby reducing the risk of infection. Moreover, this component of medical technology means that patients can be monitored at home, thereby reducing their number of hospital visits.
Clearly, health is essentially an area of provincial jurisdiction. However, the federal government has the opportunity to make better use of digital health care for the veterans and the indigenous population it serves, thereby becoming an example of health care innovation for the provinces of Canada.
Technologies that allow remote monitoring and virtual visits have been available for more than 10 years, but, because of the pandemic, we have seen those technologies adopted more quickly in the last three months than in the last 10 years. This is a tipping point and we cannot allow ourselves to turn back. Canadian companies are pioneers in this regard. According to Canada Health Infoway, before the COVID-19 pandemic, only between 10% and 20% of health care visits in Canada were done virtually. Today, that figure is closer to 60%. The federal government and each of the provincial governments have the opportunity to continue virtual visits, once the pandemic has been stamped out.
Let me illustrate all this with very specific examples. Digital health care does not just allow physical distancing, it is also an incredible tool for communicating with patients in remote locations. For example, a patient, a veteran or a member of a First Nation, who wears a pacemaker must have a check-up several times a year, with each appointment taking about 10 minutes. If that patient lives in the far north or in a remote region of our country, it can take him hours, even days, to get to the clinic. Using a form of digital technology that has existed for years and that involves an examination done remotely, reduces the risk of infection, reduces costs, and increases the efficiency of the services. Until now, that option was limited, because physicians could not bill for their services or because patients had no access to a stable Internet connection. Those two concerns can certainly be fixed with the support of the federal government.
Furthermore, in order to have access to the technologies and the solutions that help patients to obtain better care in a timely fashion, the government must focus on procurement. The pandemic actually proved beyond any doubt that procurement is not just a menial job that is simply about acquiring things. It requires men and women with a strategic vision, with a good understanding of the technologies that are needed, and with a solid foundation in new value-based procurement concepts. Those concepts, after all, have been adopted elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe.
During the pandemic, the federal government took two steps in procurement. First, it centralized procurement, especially for ventilators and personal protective equipment. Once free from a part of that burden, hospitals and industries were therefore able to concentrate on what they do best, which is taking care of patients. Then, the government began to implement innovation policies focused on demand.
Historically, the federal government has focused on the supply of innovation rather than on the demand. For more information on this subject, you can read the article by Neil Fraser, the president of Medtronic Canada, in Longwoods. Right now, I can tell you that innovation policies focused on demand involve asking for and obtaining solutions, not just products. That is exactly what the federal government did when it launched Canada's Plan to mobilize industry to fight COVID-19.
By implementing innovation policies focused on demand, the government was beginning to follow the recommendations of the Economic Strategy Table for health and bio-sciences that the government established in 2017, with the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development collaborating with Health Canada. This crisis has shown us all the importance of having a more advanced manufacturing sector in Canada. I would say that the government can achieve that by re-examining the recommendations of the Economic Strategy Table for health and bio-sciences.
I would like to end with integrated health solutions.
In our search for solutions to improve our health care system, one of the greatest challenges facing the federal and provincial governments is to find a solution to eliminate the incredible delay in surgeries and diagnostic procedures, and to avoid other deaths because of those delays.
Before the virus emerged in Canada, hospitals were already operating in a complex environment. The way forward will be increasingly difficult if we do not act quickly. Hospitals also have to adapt to the new expectations of patients who have seen the advantages of virtual care, as opposed to being afraid to stay too long in a waiting room.
Despite everything, there is hope and a huge amount of optimism. Let me give you some specific examples. One is the Fraser Health Centre in British Columbia, which now conducts patient evaluations virtually, before they are admitted. In Ontario, virtual care is used for more than 50% of the patients at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. In New Brunswick, the Vitalité Health Network has established a specialized drive-through clinic for pacemakers, in order to reduce the growing number of patients waiting to have their cardiac devices checked.
Medtronic Canada has the expertise and the tools needed to help the government to develop those kinds of new protocols and thereby to create patient-centred health care pathways. These will help health care systems meet the new challenges and the new expectations. We are determined to deliver the results that we have promised.
On behalf of Medtronic Canada, I would like to thank you once more for making it possible for me to share my comments. I hope that this session today is just the beginning of a concerted initiative that will call on the leadership and the courage of our governments, the expertise of our academia, and the resilience, experience and ingenuity of Canadian companies and their international affiliates that have chosen to invest here in Canada. The benefits will be seen in the health of all Canadians.
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
Thank you very much.
I have a quick question for Medtronic. I read in your May company report that you had a 26% decrease in your first-quarter revenue due to COVID-19. Apparently the cardiac and vascular group saw the steepest decline, at 34%. We know that many procedures are being deferred right now in order to ensure that our health care system is not overwhelmed. Your falling revenue number suggests quite a high rate. What do you think that will cost in Canadian health outcomes?
Patrick Hupé
View Patrick Hupé Profile
Patrick Hupé
2020-07-06 14:05
It's very difficult to predict this cost, but we know that the recovery seems to have been going fairly well across the country for a few weeks now. Obviously, following that, some urgent cardiac surgeries have taken place. Other operations are slowly but surely starting to resume. In this regard, it's very difficult for me to give a figure.
View John Nater Profile
CPC (ON)
Mr. Chair, this Sunday is Father's Day. It's also a time when we recognize men's mental health, a cause for which my friend from Edmonton Riverbend has been an advocate for nearly a decade. Sadly, over 75% of deaths by suicide involve men, and far too many of these are young men. With the isolation caused by COVID-19, access to normal supports is limited. Gyms and fitness centres are closed, affecting both the physical and mental health of Canadians. Far too often, alcohol and drugs are seen as coping mechanisms.
What actions will the government take to support mental health services, and particularly access to addiction services, during this time?
View Jean-Yves Duclos Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Chair, I'm pleased but certainly affected by the question that I'm hearing. I would like to congratulate the member for raising this very difficult issue.
We are, of course, all mindful in this House of the particular difficulties that all Canadians go through, including men and fathers, and I would like to assure this House that we have done very significant things over the last few weeks, including implementing a $350-million community fund, making an investment to fight homelessness and an investment for provinces to provide mental health services, including helping provinces and territories pay for the essential front-line workers who are so key in those sorts of circumstances.
Gilles Soulez
View Gilles Soulez Profile
Gilles Soulez
2020-06-10 15:17
Okay, sorry about that.
As you know, measures related to COVID-19 postponed diagnostic imaging for hundreds of thousands of Canadians, resulting in a 50% reduction in medical imaging services across the country. On top of that, non-urgent cancer screening was suspended. This has created a real sense of urgency, causing an overwhelming backlog in diagnostic imaging services.
As you know, before the crisis we already had extensive wait-lists across the country, compared to other countries. Prior to the pandemic, patients were waiting an average of 50 to 82 days for a CT scan, and up to 89 days for an MRI, magnetic resonance imaging. Those wait times are 20 to 52 days longer than recommended. This wait-list for essential services is now putting the health of Canadians in dire straits for much longer. This is especially concerning for cancer patients who are awaiting life-saving treatment that is dependent on medical imaging.
The throughput in a radiology department, with the COVID crisis, is currently estimated to be at 70% of pre-COVID activities, mainly because of the disinfection and social distancing protocols. This reality will stay with us for a long period of time due to the eventuality of a second wave of the virus.
As an example, from Quebec City, a 20-year-old male patient presented with abdominal pain. His physician filled a hospital requisition for a CT scan at the CHUL in Quebec City. Because of the backlog of the waiting list, he finally had his CT scan after two months. The pain was debilitating. A large, 20 centimetre retroperitoneal lymphoma was found. Consequently, acute therapy was initiated with significant delay, thus hampering his prognosis.
At Quebec City, the MRI wait-list is very worrisome. There are currently 12,000 patients on the wait-list for an MRI at the CHUL. As discussed before, the throughput is currently estimated at 70% compared to pre-COVID. They are working on eliminating less relevant examinations on the wait-list. Even if they can eliminate 20% of those requisitions, the wait-list will still rise to 17,000 patients in one year, just to give you an example.
In Alberta, they calculated that with the suspension of breast screening by mammography during the last two months, they've already missed 250 cases of cancer that should be treated now.
We understand that postponing non-urgent medical imaging services was necessary during the height of the pandemic. Now that the first wave has passed and the spread of the virus has been contained, we stand to resume diagnostic imaging at its fullest capacity, but in a safe way.
The health and safety of Canadians is our number one priority. We also respect the emotional well-being of patients and staff. The resumption of diagnostic imaging needs to happen in a planned, efficient and safe manner so as not to overwhelm the health care system and our health care workers.
Our task force group on the resumption of radiology services recently provided guidelines to help radiology departments to resume medical imaging safely. It is a national emergency, given the already exhaustive wait times for these procedures, and incorporating the further delay that the pandemic has created, which caused patients to wait even longer.
Prior to the pandemic it was estimated that in 2017 the economy lost $3.5 billion in GDP due to people being unable to work while waiting for medical imaging procedures. This will be substantially increased due to the COVID-19 crisis. For example, a 25% drop in patients being seen will result in an additional $1 billion of lost GDP, so close to $5 billion.
Mike, our ask.
Michael Barry
View Michael Barry Profile
Michael Barry
2020-06-10 15:22
Thank you, Gilles, for going through some of those examples.
As the committee can see, with the delays in some of this imaging, people are still frightened to come back to the emergency room or the hospital to get their tests done. It's a really unnerving thing for people to come into the hospitals now. Almost everybody is wearing a mask.
We have two firm asks we are going to put to the committee. One you're familiar with. We asked it about a year or two ago, but a larger light has been shone on it. That is the $1.5-billion investment in medical imaging over three years to bring us up to speed with our G7 partners. We're about ninth in the world for advanced imaging with CT, MRI and some of the other high-tech procedures. We're well behind other jurisdictions. COVID-19 has exacerbated that. The $1.5-billion investment won't fix the whole wait-list, but it will be a strong start to get us in the right direction.
On the lessons learned, we found that our infrastructure is quite dated nationally. There are not enough wait rooms, consultation rooms or spacing in the hospital. There are even things as simple as engineering, like our air ventilation is from the 1970s without windows. With COVID-19 and future pandemics, that's a real concern, so CAR asks the committee to consider a large task force to look at not only new equipment with the influx of patients, but also waiting room spacing, additional cleaning and mechanisms to keep people safe during the pandemic.
As for lessons learned, in conclusion, our health care system was not ready to deal with the demand. In the large urban centres, in particular, Toronto, Montreal and, to a lesser extent, Vancouver and Calgary, we didn't have the medical equipment or the staff to handle extended wait times or deal with the acute onslaught of very sick patients. We also learned that our spacing was not strong and that our PPE was not strong. We had a lot of deficits, but we've learned, and we'll learn from that going forward.
We're asking the federal government, through your committee, to support the resumption of imaging by making an investment through the federal transfers to look at new medical imaging equipment and infrastructure, hire additional radiologists, medical radiation technologists and stenographers in particular to improve our quality of care for our patients.
That's our presentation. I believe there will be questions later.
Thanks again very much to the Chair and the committee for hearing us today.
View Matt Jeneroux Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you, Dr. Liu. I would agree. Certainly, on the transparency front, we're not seeing whether or not it's available right now.
Because I have a limited amount of time, I want to move on to Dr. Soulez and Dr. Barry.
We heard of the delay in the number of screenings. I think you said it's 20 to 52 days later than recommended, Dr. Soulez.
One of the Conference Board recommendations was to spend money to replace the aging machines and buy new ones. You mentioned that as one of your asks. How much would that help? Do you have the data available in terms of helping that backlog and getting caught up? You referenced the 250 cases in Alberta. Are there others out there that we could be helping with these machines?
Gilles Soulez
View Gilles Soulez Profile
Gilles Soulez
2020-06-10 15:38
Yes, it's very important, in the sense that in the heat of the COVID-19 crisis, our capacity to operate our unit as before was decreased. For one unit, let's say, we were able to do 80 patients a day. Now we are doing 60 patients a day. We are not sure it will change in the short term, because of the issue raised by Dr. Liu that we may have a second hit coming. Also, other infections can change. I believe that, for all high-throughput procedures, we need to change the way we are doing them.
We have two ways to increase our capacity. The first is to further capital investment, as raised by Dr. Barry, to increase the number of units, because we cannot do the same amount as before. In Canada, we have the most productive radiologists for one unit, compared to the U.S. There's a really big difference. The second is to extend the operation time. It means that we need more personnel, more resources. Third, in all the waiting rooms we need to install...to be sure we are safe. We have some really important measures to do.
Mike, perhaps you want to comment on that.
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